Hard Strategy

[Misery]

I'm wondering if an insane general difficulty is needed.  I was able to win on expert/expert/expert on my first try.  I didn't seem super easy, but I also don't think I played particularly well.  I doubt expert/insane/insane would be that difficult for a strategy veteran playing with a good strategy.  I'm not sure how many people are actually trying these harder difficulties though.  It doesn't seem like very many.

I'll probably have a go at it myself in my next game.

H/H/H seemed decently challenging, though I also tend to use low overall unit counts, both human and myth.   Or what I assume is a low count, anyway.


I think the real question is:   What is it that is making even Expert seem easy?  Other than the myth unit issue, I mean (I brought that one up on Mantis, actually).   Are expansions too easy to do?  I keep thinking this might be the case;  it doesnt help at all that town centers are stupid cheap.   Considering they're the focus of a town, and that towns are super important in this game and directly related to one of the lose conditions, you'd think they'd be more expensive, or that they'd get more expensive if you already have a few, or something like that.   Particularly in the late game though, even if you're not super focused on resource gathering, their cost is completely trivial.

Or what about woes, are they too easy to handle?


I do definitely remember Chris saying that the game overall is supposed to be at a pretty high difficulty, so if it's too easy right now, something's probably a bit off...

[Billick]

It think it's mainly that you don't have to win decisively,  you just have to survive.  I think using lower turn count probably makes things easier (providing you can hit your score goals).  I haven't played co-op, but that probably makes it easier as well (more actions, but the same number of turns). 

Note that I don't think that it's too easy for me.  I found X/X/X pretty challenging and fun.  I also don't consider myself a high end strategy player.  Probably slightly above average at best.  I'm not sure though.  There may not be enough people playing these high difficulties for it to matter. 

[vehementi]

Co-op makes bandits spawn faster (I think) and makes things like Adamantite spawn N times as many bandits (20 bandits with 2 total players).

As long as I can control bandits, score is the only difficult part of the game.

I guess town centers are pretty cheap - once I stop crying that I lost a building, I don't actually care that I lost an entire city (not that that happens except in crazy situations) because I can just plop 2 more down.